How to invent a magic trick: the creators' method, from idea to prototype

A trick that already exists can be bought. A trick that suits you has to be invented. But where do you begin when you want to create your own?

To invent a magic trick, you start with the effect you want to produce rather than the technique, check what already exists, set constraints for yourself to break out of your habits, sketch out and then build a prototype, test it in front of an audience, and dress the effect in a personal presentation. This is the method used by several creators, whether they make custom-made illusions, win invention awards at FISM, or write theater shows.

This article brings together their practices in eight concrete steps, drawn from interviews conducted on the Détours de Magie channel and the reflections of magicians such as Yann Frisch and Boris Wild.

1. Start with the final effect, not the method

The common thread among almost all the creators interviewed is that they start with the effect. A custom illusion maker describes his first step as follows: identify the desires of the magician who is placing the order, reread his own notes to spot an idea already recorded, and then draw sketches of the illusion. At this stage, he often does not yet know what the process will be: what matters is finding a new and powerful effect.

A Belgian magician and winner of the invention award at FISM 2025 describes the same approach: what final effect does he want to produce (the appearance of a rose, fire), and what exists to achieve it? Boris Wild takes this logic further with his extraterrestrial theory: imagine that you have real powers, and look for the ideal effect that you would produce without having to hide them. Our profile of Boris Wild details this idea.

2. Check what already exists: invent or discover?

Before making anything, you have to search. The illusion maker continues to scour his library and the web while waiting for feedback on his sketches. The Belgian winner prefers to speak of discovery rather than invention, because many things have already been invented. He cites a mentalism effect whose several versions he had studied, always built on numbers, before realizing that no one had ever transposed it with words.

This research phase is not only useful for avoiding unintentional plagiarism. It provides building blocks: you ask what exists, how to adapt it, how to use it so that the result does not look like what someone else has already done. He also reminds us that we are not reinventing the wheel: if it exists, we adapt it.

3. Set constraints: chance as a creative tool

Many magicians have no trouble finding ideas, but rather getting out of the same five or six tricks. It is to address this problem that Sébastien Thill created Kleroterion, a card game accompanied by a book. He first made it by hand to write a first close-up show, fearing repetition. The principle: draw cards from several families and let yourself be constrained.

• The families of effects, taken from a classification into 17 families (we detailed them in our article on the families of magic effects).
• The families of objects, because you can do the same effect ten times with ten different objects.
• The staging: standing, without a table, with an audience member next to you.
• The script: the themes that can be addressed.
• The emotions, including those that are rarely used (anger, fear).
• Bonus cards that add a challenge, such as changing your voice.

Chance has the advantage of not making any value judgments: childhood will not necessarily be nostalgic, it can fall with anger. From two or three cards, associations of ideas take over. In the presentation video, a first draw conducted in a single take, with the "sympathy" card and a jewelry theme, resulted in an hour in the atmosphere of an adventure novel, business cards, and road maps. Our article Draw a card, create a unique show also presents this approach.

4. Sketch, prototype, test

Once the effect is defined, you move on to the material. The illusion maker sends his sketches to magicians to gather their feedback, modifies what needs to be modified, and then makes a cardboard or 3D-printed prototype. It is only after the prototype is validated that the real manufacturing begins. The principle is simple: make mistakes quickly and cheaply.

The FISM winner confirms this on the close-up side: when you create a card effect, you prepare, test, and discard. He speaks of mountains of torn, signed, cut cards, which many creators will recognize.

5. Look for the obvious: when the solution was right before your eyes

He describes a turning point that inventors know well: after weeks of research, the solution turned out to be the simplest and had been right in front of him from the start. He was not looking too little, he was looking too far. His method for achieving this includes three steps:

• Step back. Many people do not find because they keep their nose in the problem: you have to take a step back and take another angle.
• Let the night work. He notes that his best ideas come in the morning, between five and seven, as if the brain had continued to search while he slept.
• Make it difficult for yourself. He deliberately sets himself an impossible goal: it is by seeking the impossible that you end up finding it, while most stop at the idea that there is no solution.

Yann Frisch speaks of the same thing from another angle: the moment when you feel that the chosen method is both the simplest and the most effective, the one where you can no longer remove anything. His approach is detailed in our article on Yann Frisch.

6. Dress the effect: presentation, emotion, character

A bare effect remains an effect. The creators interviewed agree on the need to dress it: give it a context, an emotion, a meaning. The Belgian winner insists that you must adapt a trick to your technique, your atmosphere, and your personality: he has seen excellent magicians take a famous trick to the letter, and you could no longer see anything but the original creator behind them. Taking a trick without making it your own is depriving yourself of the essential.

On this question of dressing, Boris Wild sets a useful rule: the presentation, the effect, and the emotion can dictate the construction, never the method. And Sébastien Thill reminds us that an audience member remembers the emotion more than the object: at the end of a week, they no longer know which effect made them jump, but they remember that they jumped.

7. Set a deadline and get feedback

Creation is a long process. A magician describes having spent three months creating and improving an effect that only lasts three seconds on screen, in a television show: that is the price of an effect that seems simple. To keep going, the FISM winner needs a deadline. Without a deadline, he readily puts it off until tomorrow; with a competition, he makes it concrete. He also relies on a neighboring magician friend who tests his progress, on a mentor, and he has understood that the best feedback sometimes comes from those who offer a different presentation of his effect.

8. Test in front of an audience

All creators end up at the same step: play. A trick is judged in the room, not in the workshop. That is where you see if the arrangement holds, if the emotion is the one you thought it was, and if the method is invisible. That is also where you discover what you can remove: a trick is refined by being played, sometimes for years.

Frequently asked questions about creating a magic trick

How to find an idea for a magic trick?

By starting with an effect or an emotion rather than a technique, by writing down all ideas in a notebook, and by using constraints (an object, a theme, a staging) to break out of your habits.

Can you still invent a magic trick today?

Yes, but it is better to speak of discovery than invention: a lot has already been done. Originality often comes from a transposition, a personal presentation, or an unexpected object.

Should you start with the method or the effect?

Most creators start with the effect, because that is what the audience member will experience. Some start with the method, but they must then find the effect that best reveals it.

How long does it take to create a trick?

It ranges from a few minutes for a video idea to several months for a polished effect. A magician says he spent three months on a three-second effect.

Creating is first about narrowing the field of possibilities

Each step of this method amounts to restricting the field: one emotion rather than ten, one object rather than a hundred, a single constraint rather than total freedom. It is paradoxical, but it is in this tight framework that ideas appear. All that remains is to write them down, test them, and play them.